


he's found a home in me.

by shariling



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Frat Boy Richie Tozier, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, POV Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie has a big dick, extremely thirsty eddie, if i ever get there, no porn in this chapter but will be in future ones
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:48:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27672241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shariling/pseuds/shariling
Summary: Richie Tozier is the campus slut. People have written sonnets about his dick ( Bill can confirm, he's had to hear them in his writing class ), about how he can go all night and never need a break. Eddie Kaspbrak  has never even been kissed, but he is not, not, not gay, so it doesn't make a difference to him. Unless it does, when he meets Richie at one of his frat's parties and immediately gets swept up in him.Or: what to do when you have a reputation to uphold, but Eddie Kaspbrak ruins your sexual prowess, just by being a snack.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 18
Kudos: 82





	he's found a home in me.

Eddie’s never been to a college party, before. 

It’s really not surprising, when you consider he’s never been invited to one. Even that is less surprising, because he’s never really had any friends, except for those flanking either side of him as he stands in front of the party house currently vibrating to the bass of some aggressively loud music — Beverly Marsh on one side, Mike Hanlon on the other. There’s some mostly naked man doing a keg stand on the front lawn, and Eddie suddenly feels completely out of his element, polo shirt scantily clad to just _one_ button done up, his jeans cuffed at the ankle to show off long socks — the kinds with yellow and red stripes at the lip, angled downward to his favorite pair of Chucks. His Sunday best, on a Friday night, in front of a fucking frat house. 

To be fair, he wasn’t really invited to this party, either. Mike met Bill in some nonfiction writing class he’s taking this semester, and Mike practically begged them to come with him to this terrifying place. The term _wingman/woman_ was not used, but the way he ducked his head and turned his gaze away from them said plenty. Only shitty friends would not go. And a shitty friend, Eddie is not.

“You losers gonna head inside?” Beverly asks with a tilt to her voice, lightly nudging Eddie’s side with her hip. Eddie draws his gaze from the horror house in front of him and finally looks at Bev, who seems unfazed by the whole demonstration of — of _college boys_.

She raises her brows, shoulders lifting.

“What?” She looks over at Mike, who is still nervously looking at the house. Beverly sighs, taking Eddie by the hand. “C’mon, you big babies.”

“Bev — fuck!”

Tugged in, Eddie grips Mike by the hand at the same time as they get strong armed up the porch by a fiery redhead who is currently sick of some shit. If Eddie thought the music was loud outside, once the doors open it’s like the vibrating of the house moves to his brain, rattling from one ear to the other. He could complain about the music, but immediately there are about a thousand other things he finds himself capable of complaining about — the kitchen island in the back corner of the house that he can see even from here is covered with alcohol, the kegs occupying the living room in place of a coffee table, the two, three — _five_ bongs he can see just at first glance. 

“I’m fucking out of here,” Eddie says immediately. 

“We just got here!” Bev shouts over the music. She lets his wrist go, and Eddie feels distinctly less sure of letting Mike’s hand go, but it would be weird to keep holding it, so. He does, belatedly. “Mike’s gotta go find his fratty boyfriend, and we’ve got to go steal some of his beer. Right?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Mike swallows around the words dryly. 

“Not yet, sure. He invited you here, right? We’ve at least got to go find him. We can steal a six pack and then hightail it after that, okay, Eddie?”

Eddie thinks about it. He is not as straight laced as everyone thinks, see — he did have a sip of a beer his first week of college, courtesy of Beverly, and very politely decided he hated it with a cursing rant of _this shit tastes like piss water and stale vomit_. He could do without the beer, that’s a fact. But they’re here less for the beer and more for Mike, and he fucking loves Mike, and this will mean Mike owes him one, so.

“Fine,” he says after a minute, shoving his hands into the back pockets of his highwaisted pants. “But seriously, no one touch anything. I bet they don’t even own a fucking vacuum cleaner.”

Beverly snorts a laugh, and takes the lead in through the house. There’s so many men in so many fucking tank tops, it’s — gross, Eddie thinks. Gross. He feels sweaty because it’s gross, warm in the pit of his chest because it’s gross. The only thing stopping him from spontaneously combusting is fantasizing about how badly he’d love to clean this house top to bottom, in a full hazmat suit. He’d swab all the countertops first, he thinks, and then do a precursory once over with a vacuum, and then _really_ get into the nitty gritty, hands and knees, washing the floor —

“Mikey!”

There comes a jovial shout from the staircase as the trio wind their way towards the kitchen, each of them spinning on their heels as a tiny man in plaid catches Mike up in a tight hug. Bill Denbrough is a man with more presence than height, that much is made clear to Eddie as he looks between them, some three inches his senior, and yet somehow small in comparison. Beverly calls it an alpha complex, how immediately Eddie hones in on the height of the men around him to label his own self worth. Immediately, Eddie likes Bill, because he’s tiny, and sometimes that’s all it takes to get on Eddie’s good side. 

“Are you enjoying the party?” he asks when he pulls back from the hug. Mikey just looks at him, a little bewilderedly and in awe, before Beverly punches him in the arm.

“We just got here,” she answers for him. “I’m Bev, and this is our friend Eddie. We’ve heard a lot about you.”

Mikey blushes. Eddie’s heart knows sympathy, but his grin is biting back a laugh. 

“Really?” But Bill seems delighted, letting his hand linger on Mike’s shoulder. “Good things?”

“Eh,” Eddie shrugs, playfully waggling his brow at Bev. “There was something about your clothes, I think? Something about … “

“The fit of them, maybe?” Bev supplies, both of them feigning not remembering the very explicit description they got of what Bill’s ass looks like in his Levis. Mike flushes, laughing nervously and too loud.

“Okay, yep, that’s enough of that! Haha, okay.” He takes Bill’s hand, sending a look of death threats over his head at his two so called friends. Beverly and Eddie can only grin, waving at him. “They can handle themselves, I think. Let’s go … uh.”

“Nice to meet you,” Bill says too quickly, pulling Mike back up from where he came down the stairs. Eddie catcalls them while Beverly whoops excitedly, watching as they disappear. No preamble, just locked doors and nervous giggling. Good for them, Eddie thinks, swallowing dryly around the absolutely nothing that’s clogging his throat, the nothing that feels like a rock lodged in somewhere deep. He’s not jealous, why would he be?

It’s nothing.

Beverly grips his wrist and tugs him into the kitchen, and it continues to be nothing as he sees a pair of decidedly _possibly_ attractive men climbing all over each other at the breakfast bar. What does it look like on Sunday mornings, Eddie wonders, when the music is gone and the people are missing, and the only one to observe Bill eating his morning cornflakes is the oven that reads _99:99_ on the clock. Will the boys still be kissing then, in the not-hour of _ninety-nine, ninety-nine_ , and will their fervor be softer, sweeter? How many kisses has this oven stolen away before, eaten up like frozen pizzas and weed brownies, and probably a caked on layer of baked food, because Eddie refuses to believe it’s ever been cleaned before.

That means the kisses are still in there too, each one those boys share as Eddie walks past them, eyes moving past when one of the peers up to look at him. 

There’s a man in the corner of the room, gangly limbs hanging a little too awkwardly at his side, like a guy who got tall overnight but never really grew into it. He has a beer in one hand, and his ear is in the mouth of a guy half his size — this skinny, fighty little thing whose hand wraps around the front of an unfortunate looking tank top, pulling the behemoth man down to his level. But this man is decidedly _actually_ attractive, more than the men at the bar, with his rimmed glasses hiding away the color of his eyes which Eddie finds himself desperate to see, as desperate as he is to feel the coarse hair of his stumble gliding beneath his mouth, as he kisses that pointed jaw bone to oblivion.

Eddie wonders if a boy will ever kiss him in front of the stove, in the hour that doesn’t exist, in the place that isn’t _really_ real. He wonders if that boy would. It doesn’t count if the oven is the only one there to judge him.

But he has a boy already, and nothing wells up in Eddie’s throat again. Nothing sometimes feels a lot like something, he finds.

“I see you’ve got eyes on Richie Tozier, Eddie,” Beverly tuts her tongue. “Who knew?”

“Who’s Richie Tozier?”

Beverly scoffs.

“You don’t know him?”

“Why are you so shocked?”

“Richie Tozier is, like,” she cringes around the word a little, nose swiveling in distaste. “The campus slut. I mean — he gets around, that’s all. He’s got a pretty good reputation, to be honest. You really haven’t heard of him?”

Wordlessly, Eddie shakes his head, trying not to appear too interested in this so-called _Richie_ , but also not able to draw his gaze away for any particularly good reason. Some people are just magnetic, he imagines. With hair that curls under where it's tucked behind his ear, and a lazy smile that gets boisterous, _loud_ when he laughs. Which he does often, it seems. The guy nibbling his ear must be quite the jokester, and Eddie’s fingers flex around a crackling solo cup once Bev puts it in his hand. 

He looks down, eyebrows knitted. 

“This isn’t a six pack.”

“Brilliant. We’re not leaving Mikey here, so you might as well get comfy.” At Eddie’s groan, Beverly lifts her brow, raising her own cup in cheers. “Glug glug, baby boy.”

Eddie still hates beer. It hasn’t changed in the last few minutes and it probably won’t change in the next couple years, but he does feel a little hot under the collar all of a sudden. Irrationally irritated at something he can’t quite explain, something he doesn’t have a name to. The burning sensation he feels in his throat when he looks at the campus slut Richie Tozier, chasing it down with the stink of Budweiser. He bets he is riddled with diseases. 

“Ugh,” he says. It kind of tastes like jealousy. Not that he wants STIs —

“Yeah,” Beverly relents, frowning at her own cup. “College boys and their beer. Hey, at least we didn’t have to pay for it.”

He wants to argue that getting it for free doesn’t mean they have to drink it, but dutifully swallows some more instead, around the descending thirst in his belly. Parched. He should get some water. The boy with a mop for hair is laughing again, and Eddie wonders how drunk you can be off one sip of beer. 

Beverly notices his gaze, and something weighs heavily in her eyes for a moment, flickering between the two of them and the weird tension in the air. Beverly is not someone who can hide her expressions easily. In the fifth grade she got punched in the nose by some jock who thought she was looking at him funny. To be fair, she was — resting bitch face, no, but a stank look after seeing him dump a kid’s backpack contents on the cold concrete, yes. Bloody nosed, she whirled around and got him right in the nuts, one swift blow and the great bully Hocksetter was crying on the floor, begging for mommy. 

It was the single most epic thing Eddie had ever witnessed. He had a panic attack for fourteen hours after, and plugged Bev’s nose up with a tampon he’d stolen from his mom’s bathroom, shouting about drowning in your own blood, about setting the bone, about Beverly’s cute button nose getting a twist in it, and — eventually, how she looked better that way. Her nose piercing when they turned sixteen made it look badass. Very _don’t fuck with me_ , which turned into an _us_ , Eddie and the boy with the backpack. Mike Hanlon. 

He sees the girl with a fierce right hook before him now, a knot between her brows. It makes him thirstier, being perceived in a way where he can’t find what she’s looking at — whatever’s written so plainly on his chest that he can’t look down to see the full font. He chugs the rest of his beer, and starts angling for another cup. 

“You should introduce yourself.”

Eddie huffs a laugh, lying to himself. “To who?”

“Who else? Richie Tozier.”

“I don’t think he’s interested.”

“You haven’t even talked to him.”

“He has some guy's tongue in his ear.” No. Wait. That’s not why. He shakes his head. “ _I’m_ not interested.”

“Really? Because you’re staring at him like you want to take a bite out of him.”

“I’m — ” he scoffs, looking at her the way Jesus must’ve looked at Judas. Utter betrayal. “He’s a _guy_.”

“Uh-huh. And?”

“I’m a guy.”

“There is no proof you’re not just a giant, mutated puppy with a perky ass. The doctors are still debating.”

“I’m not _gay_.”

Beverly looks at him, and he must be seeing what Hocksetter saw right before he got his nards punched in. Eddie heard the doctor had to pull them out of him like they were afraid to dangle between his legs in case Mean Bev had a big case of the _fuck yous_ in his direction again, and Eddie resolutely didn’t look his balls in the eyes for months after the fact. Tangent fear. He’s so empathetic, or at least just paranoid. Here it comes, the infamous right hook. That Marsh jaw has never looked so clenched. 

“How do you know?”

She only distantly misses her mark by knocking him in the gut, instead — not with those tiny little knuckles with rings for brass, but with her words. How does he know? 

He blinks at her. Beer acquired, he goes back to drinking. She sighs. 

“You’ve never even looked at a girl before.” How can he hear her over his gulping? He swallows louder, in response. “I’m just saying. If you wanted to try it out, he’s as good a teacher as any. You know what they say about him?”

He’s still drinking. But he shakes his head, lips over the rim of his solo cup, because he’s almost two cups of beer past caring that he cares. 

“They say he can go for hours,” Bev’s mouth twists up wickedly, angling a perched eyebrow in his direction. “Godlike was the word I heard used. Next to heavenly. Richie Tozier, a god among men.”

Godlike. Next to heavenly. The cup moves from his lips and he imagines that yeah, he can see that. His smile seemed heavenly. Figures his dick is probably heavenly, too. 

“I heard he’s packing, too.”

Eddie’s eyes look back to the man himself, but he finds the brighter corner of the room left in shadows from his absence. No floppy curls to be found, no laughter. Well — there is laughter. A drunk maniac falls to the floor and takes a friendly looking giant with him, who helps him up. The two laugh. Eddie just doesn’t care. 

“I don’t care how big his dick is,” he lies, poutily placing his cup down on top of the keg and crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Uh-huh. Why’re you looking for him, then?”

Here’s the thing.

Eddie stands by that stone cold sober Eddie is absolutely, one hundred percent, no doubt about it, a heterosexual man. His mom would kill him otherwise, and he doesn’t want to make her unhappy. An unhappy Sonia Kaspbrak could mean the end of his college experience as he knows it — with a coo or a shout, she could have him packing his bags back up to Maine, and like a resolutely loyal dog, he’d do it with his tail between his legs, apologizing. Whatever he did, he’s sorry, mommy. Failing a test, he’s sorry. Getting sick, he’s sorry. Being gay, he’s sorry.

Luckily, he’s very straight. But two solo cups of beer deep Eddie maybe, might be, slightly gay.

“I’m going to tell him his shirt is ugly.”

Bev snorts a laugh, and the seriousness of the pinch between Eddie’s brow makes her laugh harder, pulling a tear from her eye with the knuckle of one finger. Her gaze loses focus and drips up and over his shoulder, where she grins brighter, waggling her brows in a suggestive manner. He knows the phrase _nut up or shut up_ to be particularly significant in Bev’s eyes. 

“Well, here’s your chance now.”

The hair stands up on the back of Eddie’s neck, and before he even turns he knows who’ll be there — mostly, if not entirely because Beverly’s smug look paints a clear and apparent picture. Spinning on his heels, Eddies eyes fall on the sharp jut of a jaw bone placed before him, unshaven with delightful little specks of black stubble, that decorate the seemingly nonplussed twist of a gorgeous mouth. Eddie swallows and follows his gaze up, where stormy eyes are looking at him behind the veil of thick rimmed glasses.

Eddie swallows thickly. What the fuck.

“Why’re you so close to me?”

Eddie barks this, instinctively hates the aggression in his voice, but can’t seem to help himself lashing out at whoever’s currently annoying him. Right now it’s Richie and his sharp jaw, his clever eyes that flicker between each of his with a look of brief surprise, before they melt into something closer to amusement, skin wrinkling as his mouth lifts into a grander smile. It’s 10p.m., but he could swear the sun is shining. 

“You’re in front of the keg,” he points while he says it, grinning, turning his eyes over his shoulder with an understanding nod. “Marshmallow.”

“Boy Toy-zer,” Bev returns, and the betrayal is back in Eddie’s blood, a revelation that Beverly _knows_ him, and has been keeping him to herself. He means to turn around and snap, but Beverly instead clasps both hands on his shoulders, leaning forward. “Eddie here has some comments to make on your outfit, he was just telling me about it. I’ll let you get to it.”

Traitorous. A pox on her house. Eddie’s giant eyes blink in one flustered beat of his heart, and he feels heat crawling up at the back of his neck as Beverly peels away, off to find somewhere else to spend her time. Richie, in the look of smug amusement that seems to be his natural state, reaches down to pluck at the belly of his shirt. 

“My clothes?”

“Yes.” It’s weirdly choked out, Eddie’s voice raw and dry from disuse, or maybe just from a weird burning that takes residence up the back of his throat, choking him. Allergic reaction, maybe? If there were cashews in the beer. Though if there were cashews, he’d probably already be dead, which would be great right now, because dead men can’t see huge fingers wind around threadbare cloth, pinching a tank top where it sits oversized on Richie’s shoulders. The neck swoops down, and Eddie imagines the curve of a bell, the merry tune it makes when it’s struck. What sound would Richie make, touched there? 

If he wanted to know, apparently he could ask anyone. The length of his skin is not uncharted territory, as detailed by the many, many reports of his sexual prowess. Eddie could Christopher Columbus this bitch and pretend he’d carved the pathways of his elongated neck, mapped the height of his adam’s apple with his tongue before anyone else knew he was even there, but colonialism is decidedly not sexy, and Eddie’s fucking jealous. It’s the beer talking. 

He reaches forward and plucks the shirt from Richie’s fingers, fluffing it out with a snap of his wrist. It doesn’t make a satisfying snap as it floats back to his skin, which annoys him. 

“ _Yeah_ ,” he starts again, taking a bold step forward. If he’s surprised when Richie doesn’t back off, he doesn’t act like it, instead reaching to pluck his shirt once again. “What even is this? It’s barely a shirt.”

“If it covers my tits, it’s a shirt, I think.”

“Sweaters exist. Jackets exist. Hoodies.”

“It’s not really cold enough to be wearing those.”

“Vests, then.”

“You really think I own a _vest_?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know you.” Eddie sniffs, jutting his chin out, like he just won the most important argument of his life. “I just hate your shirt.”

“You can learn to hate other things about me,” Richie offers, like that’s supposed to be charming. As if. Eddie’s practically standing on his shoes, head tilted up towards him in a way where his breath hits his mouth in a way that is not entirely unpleasant. “Trust me, there’s plenty. Did you know I shit with the door open? Sometimes I go outside just to piss. Really makes me feel one with nature. And if you hate this shirt, you should see this one that my buddy Bill got me — it just says _Sports_ on the tits. I’m Richie, by the way.” 

“I’ve heard,” Eddie bites, and he really shouldn’t be so bitter about it. No one is entitled to give him anything, least of all a stranger with a big dick. Eddie clears his throat. “About your dick actually. It’s apparently a fucking celebrity.”

Richie seems unphased. 

“Good things, I hope.”

“I don’t care about your dick,” he lies, once again. Richie barks out a laugh, and Eddie feels his ears get red. “I’m Eddie.”

“Yeah, I know. We have a class together.”

Brown eyes perk at that, a knot forming between his brows as he gives him a look over, head to toe, pretending like he isn’t lingering at his waist as if to catch a look at that there dingaling. No, they definitely don’t have a class together. Eddie surely would’ve noticed him. 

“Wait.” Eddie swallows. Gives him a _spin_ gesture. “Turn around.”

Richie must be the best sport on campus, and maybe Eddie understands now why Bill bought him that shirt — he spins, and Eddie is faced with sleep paralysis levels of shock at the memory pervading his mind. Big shoulders. He knows these mountains. 

“Oh my god,” Eddie shouts it, a little, over the loud music. He reaches forward and slaps Richie’s shoulder, finding the muscles of his arm satisfyingly firm under his palm. He doesn’t pull his hand away. “You’re Big Shoulders from Business.”

“Big shoulders?”

“Are you kidding me? You’re built like a fucking jungle gym. I could —“

Monkey bars on him, shove his dick in his mouth with every pull up, like a reward for him for good behavior. Exercise deserves to be rewarded. He imagines Richie’s mouth would probably suffice in the place of a nice granola bar. 

“You could..?” Richie inquires, turning back to face him. Eddie’s hand falls to his side and feels cold. “Climb me like a tree?”

“ _No_ ,” Eddie insists, flustered up to his ears, debating the validity in Richie being able to read minds. Or maybe it’s just written on his face, how stupid into him he is, despite the aforementioned heterosexuality. “No, why would you say that. You’re — you were flirting with some other guy earlier, anyway. I’m not gonna be your second pick, just because you washed out.”

“Some other guy?” Richie tilts his head. “You mean Stan?”

“How should I know? I didn’t see his face, I just saw his mouth in your ear.”

That laugh falls out of Richie’s mouth but it doesn’t have the same delight it did when it was years across the room, and Eddie could pretend it was in response to anything. Now he _knows_ it’s only in response to him making fun of Eddie, which doesn’t feel great.

“Yeah, Eds,” Richie lifts a hand up to the back of his head, shaking like a floppy dog. “He had his mouth in my ear because I was getting chewed out for being an asshole.”

“Don’t call me Eds,” he decides immediately, eyebrows knitting. But more importantly — “Why are you an asshole?”

“Oh, the answers to that question,” he huffs a lighter laugh. “Apparently it’s asshole behavior to steal your buddy’s meal prep for the week because you're too dumb to feed yourself. Who knew?

“Besides,” Richie drops his voice a little lower, and for that he seems almost more massive by comparison. How is he making the music filter out, until it’s just them in the kitchen, voyeuristically observed by a horny stove? “You don’t have to be jealous, Eddie my darling. Stan’s straight.”

Eddie doesn’t know what to make of that — the implication, the seedy look in his eyes ( blue, they’re blue, they’re blue and fucking beautiful ), and so he just says the first thing that comes to his mind.

“So am I.”

**Author's Note:**

> tried to do nano, failed. this was as far as i got. maybe i will continue later!! who knows. comment if you liked it, i need constant coddling.


End file.
